The creation of media campaigns such as television commercials has become more complex as technology allows greater control and variation of creation and delivery of such campaigns. In the case of video messages, there are specific challenges with building templates for personalized message campaigns. Today's processes and products for video message production are focused on the creation of single, linear video messages, and do not easily allow for the creation of sets of inter-related personalized video messages. May things are difficult, including the ability to build templates for personalized message campaigns, in such a way that it is easy to replace certain media elements based on user information, whilst maintaining the narrative of all individual messages. Another difficulty is the ability to build user profile templates, and link the user profile data to the various different media elements in a personalized message campaign template. Another difficulty is the ability to define environmental information, and link that to certain media elements in a personalized message campaign template.
As an example, the present-day process for creating (single) TV commercials is illustrated in FIG. 1. A typical TV commercial starts from a campaign brief 20, which is typically created at the ad agency. The brief is a document that describes goal, target segment, and outline of the commercial. The brief can be hand-written, or created with the help of a productivity tool like a word processor or other.
From there, the creative team designs a linear storyboard 22, which after being approved by the advertiser, becomes the shooting board and script. The storyboard can contain sketches of the final media, or electronic representations (thumbnails). The storyboard can be hand-written, or created with the help of a productivity tool like a word processor or visualization program or other.
The shooting board is used by the production team during the shoot (Acquisition 24). Changes to the script and/or storyboard are changed on location after approval by the agency. The shooting board can be hand written, or created and maintained through a productivity tool like a word processor or visualization program or other. Sometimes (portable versions of) professional editing programs are used on location, so as to be able to create “rough edits” of the commercial (to ensure that the material is good). An example would be the FinalCutPro (Editing Program by Apple Inc.) running on a portable Mac computer.
The resulting media elements are then finally edited 26 and locked down. Audio elements are then recorded and graphics are created. Several professional audio and video (editing) tools are typically used during this phase. Examples are: MediaComposer (Editing Program by Avid), ProTools (Audio Editing Program by DigiDesign), etc.
All media elements are combined into a final linear story during the finishing stage 28. Several professional audio and video (finishing) products are typically used during this phase. An example is Symphony (Finishing Program, Avid). The last two phases (Editing 26 and Finishing) 28 are together referred to as Post-Production. The resulting linear commercial is then either stored on a file server or mastered to videotape.
Most present-day TV commercials are created this way, yet there are numerous possible variations on this basic workflow, such as:                Multiple storyboards (or even complete commercials) are created in parallel, the advertiser will then finally select one of them for final airing.        Iteration in the process, in other words certain steps are repeated one or more times, until the result is approved by the advertiser.        The storyboarding process actually includes the production of a basic low-cost version of the commercial (or at least an animation) so as to make the approval process easier.        
Whatever variant on this process is followed, and whatever electronic tools are used to support this, the process is fundamentally designed to produce linear stories where the narrative starts with a particular shot, then moves to the next single shot, and so on until the story is told. Further, although current video editing and finishing applications allow for multiple video, audio and graphics tracks to be active during the creation process, at the time of finishing, all of these tracks are resolved down to a final linear set, as shown in FIG. 2. There is usually one video track 30, with graphics superimposed, and two or four audio tracks 32.
When this process is used to create different versions of a commercial, the finishing process actually results in a set of separate linear TV commercials that are not related to each other anymore (although 80% of the content of the commercial may be identical). If it becomes necessary to make changes in the “common” part of the TV commercials, it is necessary to go back to the production process and re-do all different variants of the commercial. More specifically, the process does not allow for elements of the commercial to be automatically changed/customized later on in the process (the commercial is already finished, and cannot be changed anymore without going back to the production and finishing process). This makes it impossible to automatically generate personalized versions of the commercial that are specific for a given audience or context at (or close to) the time of play out.
Simply put, one of the limitations of the present day process is that after post-production, all relations between media (different versions) and data (demographics) are lost. All that is left is a (set of) linear TV commercial(s). This makes it impossible to automatically change the commercial and make it more relevant to a target audience later on in the process.